


Uncommon Passenger

by Morningstarofnight



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Solarpunk, Alternate Universe - Wings, Character Study, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-07 15:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18413243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morningstarofnight/pseuds/Morningstarofnight
Summary: In 1903, Henry Morgan bore witness to a miracle. Humans had been attempting to reach the skies for centuries. It seemed certain, before that day, that flight lay only within the realm of God, or wherever one believed such fantasies were held beyond human reach. Then Henry found himself in the midst of the Great Feathering, and humans all around the world grew wings of any type of bird alive at that time. More than 100 years later, it was just one more problem to add to his curse.





	Uncommon Passenger

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a short one-shot exploring my wings AU idea. Let me know if you'd like to see a full fic set in this world!

Abraham Morgan was born with the wings of a sparrow, and they had been through a lot. He had been fitted with a wing tag as a baby in the camps, and the bones had been battered over the years in exhausting late-night flights across the country (or seas) whenever his family had to move again.

But he was lucky, despite everything. He fit right in in New York, with the punk pigeon-wings and starling-kind. He lived in one of the greenest cities in the world. After the bald eagle scare in the 70s, people finally realized what human wing specialists had been saying for decades: once a bird goes extinct, that’s it. No more humans will ever share wings with them. And gradually, species by species, humans would never fly again if nothing changed. Abraham was alive to see a better world, a world where he could look out his window and see owls nesting in their terrace forest.

In short, he wasn’t his father.

Henry Morgan was born with no wings at all. For nearly the first 100 years of his immortal life, humans traveled the mundane, historical way – by boat, by horse, by foot. 1903, however, marked the year of the Great Feathering. On December 17, for unclear reasons, humans around the world grew wings, so perfectly structured and suited to their bodies that no one understood why they hadn’t always had them. (It came with its detriments – brittle bones were a common issue, and shortness of breath, not to mention the entirely changed shape of the chest-bone with the growth of the keel.)

Humans grew the wings of quetzals and macaws, of ostriches (poor souls who drew the short straw of genetics and ended up flightless anyway) and flamingoes, sparrows and falcons and silent-flighted owls.

And Henry Morgan grew the wings of a passenger pigeon.

For 10 years, he was like Abe – common in a crowd, lots of kindred spirits to talk to, no more exotic than a sparrow.

Then the passenger pigeon went extinct. Then the world began to notice, as with year after year there were less and less and less humans still wearing the wings of a dead bird, and none were born anew. Henry could not stay in one place for long due to his immortality alone, but when people began asking questions beyond how he stayed so young –

“What kind of wings do you have, anyway? I’ve never seen your kind of bird before.”

“Are you sure they’re just pigeon wings? They look a little odd.”

“Aren’t you lonely?”

\- he ~~ran~~ flew. ~~  
~~


End file.
